Author’s note: This post reflects only the month of April. Sunday night’s numbers are not reflected in the data.
The dreadful month of April is mercifully over for the Yankees and their fans, and its end was punctuated by an ugly 8-0 loss at the hands of second-place Boston at Fenway Park Saturday night. And it was more of the same for the Yankees: no offense and crummy middle relief pitching. For this piece, I’m focusing on the missing offense and its April numbers because it is a big reason why the Yankees have had one of their worst starts since I was still in high school.
One of the bigger stories this past month was about the Atlanta Braves and their inability to hit home runs—they’ve only hit five so far and they rank last in the majors. Well, guess who ranked behind even them in runs scored in April? Yep, the Yankees were dead last in runs scored. Through Saturday’s game, the Yankees only scored 74 while allowing 104.
As a team the Yankees batted .233/.304/.360 with a .127 ISO and a .235 TAv. They had 170 hits which ranked them 28th in the league, one ahead of Tampa who had 169 in April and eight ahead of Milwaukee who had 162 in April. Pittsburgh led the league with 250 hits and Boston led the American League with 238. The Yankees had 70 RBI which was good for another spot in dead last in the league. St. Louis led the league with 136 RBI and Boston led the AL East with 119. New York had 22 home runs in April which ranked more middle of the road at 17th in the league. Arizona and Colorado tied for the league lead with 37 while Baltimore led the American League with 34.
There is actually one category where the Yankees ranked near the bottom which is actually a good thing: They only struck out 159 times as a team in April. Houston led the league in that category with 238 strike outs.
So it’s not a surprise that the Yankees are in the bottom half of the leaderboards in most offensive categories because we’ve all watched the games. We’ve seen how inept they are are driving in runs and getting big hits with men on base, day in and day out. But looking at the numbers on a screen and seeing how they relate to the other teams in the league really drives the point home on how badly this offense has performed so far.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how the Yankees three guys to step up—Jacoby Ellsbury, Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez—instead, the following three guys have: Brian McCann (.262/.351/.415 with a TAv .263), Starlin Castro (.305/.345/.488 with a TAv of .279.) and Ronald Torreyes (.381/.381/.524 with a TAv .307 in 21 PA). They are the top three in BWARP so far this season with a 0.5, 0.4 and a 0.3 respectively. Ellsbury (.235/.278/.341 with a TAv of .218), Teixeira (.224/.352/.355 with a TAv of 2.54) and Rodriguez (.185/.274/.400 with a TAv of .234) all have negative BWARP and are still looking to break out.
And which player is the worst in nearly every single offensive category in April? Chase Headley. He batted .150/.268/.150 with a TAv of .171. He also didn’t have an extra base hit and he only had two RBI in 71 plate appearances. Though there is one positive for Headley: he only had 14 strike outs—Carlos Beltran led the team with 21.
Another positive for Headley is that his problem isn’t that he’s swinging and missing all the time, the problem seems to be his ground ball rate.
He hit a ton of ground balls, but they were not poking through the infield for hits. His BABIP was .191 in April, so it has to get better at some point, right? There’s definitely room for improvement there and eventually some of those balls will find holes and he’ll get his numbers up.
Here are some more team numbers for April:
- The Yankees had a .268 BABIP which ranked fifth worst in the league
- They had 576 batted balls so far and hit 135 fly balls, 270 ground balls, 126 line drives and 45 pop ups
- Their Guillen Number, the percentage of a team’s runs which come via home runs, was a 41.89 which is good for 12th in the league. Seattle leads that category with 52.00.
So after looking at all of the data and crunching these numbers, do I believe that the Yankees’ offensive offense will improve in May and beyond? I do, and I’m an inveterate pessimist, but even I’m not panicking yet. I do not believe that the team will be this bad all season. And while yes, an 8-15 start to the season pretty putrid and disheartening, and I understand why others seem to be throwing in the towel, I have watched way too much baseball in my nearly 42 years on this tiny blue sphere we call Earth to allow myself to fall into the trap of, “They’re going to be just like the 1990 squad!” because people have been saying that for the past three seasons and it still hasn’t happened.
Check back with me in a month and see if I still feel the same way.
Lead photo: Greg M. Cooper / USATSI